This paper establishes a principle of strategic
nonviolent defense called "sacrifice": Expect the worst and
tolerate heavy casualties. It chides
a tendency in nonviolent defense literature to underestimate potential loss of
life, were indeed a Polity to wage serious unarmed struggle against a ruthless
Foe-Polity.

Nonviolent defense planning must be imbued with
worst-case analysis regarding the possible duration and magnitude of suffering.
A populace must be ready to overcome exemplary terrorism and brutality,
including nuclear extortion. It is more prudent for defenders to assume that casualties will be heavy, rather than admit they might be. Such a posture raises moral questions and
religious ultimates which have been discounted by modern exponents of
nonviolent defense. But extreme consequences and moral wherefores cannot be
wished away.

Preface

For the ultimate question is always this: What do we do if the passive
resistance ends by really getting on an adversary's nerves and he takes up the
struggle against it with brutal strong-arm methods? Are we then resolved to
offer further resistance?If so,
we must for better or worse invite the gravest, bloodiest persecutions. —
Adolf Hitler, 1926[1]

. . . the point . . . to consider is not how to avoid the extreme
penalty, but how to behave so as to achieve the object in view. —
Mohandas K. Gandhi, 1939[2]

If a nation disarms, can it wage strategic
nonviolent defense against a ruthless foe?In discussing this issue, I use the general terms Polity and Foe-Polity.A Polity can be thought
of as a nation-state, but it could also be a city-state, a non-state nation, a
region, an alliance, the United Nations, a world government, or the like.A Foe-Polity is any of the above, and
one that threatens, invades, or occupies another Polity.

Elsewhere, I have identified morale as the center of gravity in the combat between a
Polity and a Foe-Polity; nationalintegrity among the preeminent political goals of a nonviolent defense effort; and dislocation/demoralization/departure as the sequential wartime purposes of "us"
versus "them".[3]The Foe-Polity, the Polity, and its
Strategy of nonviolent common defense could each be discussed in terms of their
respective Particulars, Parties, Principles, Purposes, Policies, and
Programs.I have sought to
identify some dozen Principles for the Strategy of nonviolent common defense,
in seven words each.For example,
"Defiance":There
is no surrender in nonviolent defense.This paper will consider a concomitant
Principle called "Sacrifice":

Expect the worst and tolerate heavy
casualties.

Argument

In the first place, this is not an advice only to a
commander, a general, a chief of state.This is a Principle addressed to the entire Polity, to be fully
assimilated and appreciated by all its members.It is nauseating to hear leaders or strategists talk about
"accepting" casualties of any magnitude, if they are not talking
about themselves as well.All too often "accepting
casualties" means you and you and you are going to die; and all too often, "you" means youth.

In the second place, we have another deadly
principle here, only this one is more so.Presupposition of deaths in the course of struggle has always been a
part of nonviolent defense thinking — to an extent.Some writers on nonviolence bravely
steel themselves to admit that hundreds, yes, even thousands, may perish.Beyond that, they may vaguely cite
casualties of less than a nuclear holocaust.In my opinion, this reality, although frequently given its
due, nonetheless tends to be understated and underestimated.

(Of course that is a common political shortcoming;
leaders will seldom want to announce or even face up to how many might die
— or will have died — in any war: limited; protracted;
nuclear.Sometimes there are
exceptions, as in Middle-Eastern-type braggadacio.)

I say that the twentieth century, being what it is,
requires the nonviolent war strategist to move the decimal point four or five
places,[4]
so as to entertain casualty figures anywhere from five to nine digits; possibly
ten if there is nuclear insanity by others.[5]This leaves some nations out of the
running; therefore percentage figures might be a more meaningful index of
potential sacrifice.Two digits
should suffice.[6]Let us say that in principle a nation must be prepared to pay very, very heavily
in lives to preserve its freedom.This holds true whether your nation is influenced by Joseph Stalin or
Herman Kahn, Mao Zedong or Mohandas Gandhi.

It is in the nature of risk that the worst doesn't
necessarily happen, and so risk often partakes of bluff, imprudence, hubris, or
paranoia.However, when these
elements are filtered out, we must still anchor the risky principle of
Sacrifice on three sepulchral assumptions:

That said, we do not forget that strategic
nonviolence does its utmost to inhibit violence by the adversary and exerts all
efforts to minimize casualties.But the Polity using strategic nonviolence will not shrink from
withstanding the most awful degree of death and desolation.How can it differ in that respect from
what happens in the real world?Take, for instance, the words of Pham Van Dong, Premier of [North]
Vietnam, who told James Cameron in December 1965:

But it is costing us terribly dear.I'm not acting when I say that I am obliged to cry — literally cry
— at the suffering and the losses.And they will get worse, make no mistake . . . .[7]

What I am proposing is to remove any taint of
utilitarianism from the question of casualties in nonviolent defense versus
those of nuclear and conventional war.We would accept in principle that
unarmed defense may result in body counts exceeding any in ordinary war.Thus, as Gandhi put it in April 1939,
while urging the British to undertake a nonviolent defense against Hitler,
". . . the point. . . to consider is not how to avoid the extreme penalty,
but how to behave so as to achieve the object in view."[8]

Even that is a somewhat pragmatic viewpoint for
Gandhi, who was an eminently pragmatic person.His larger perspective is more apparent in this comment
which he made the following month:

It is highly probable that . . . "a Jewish Gandhi in Germany, should
one arise, could function for about five minutes and would be promptly taken to
the guillotine." But that would not disprove my case or shake my belief .
. . I can conceive the necessity of the immolation of hundreds, if not
thousands . . . Sufferers need not see the result during their lifetime.[9]

Granted; but as I was saying, add a few more zeroes
to that.

In the nonviolent defense literature, here is how
some of the writers have treated the problem of what we could call the logical
consequences of the non-surrender principle.Elihu Burritt in 1852:

Now, then, let us suppose the same people, with the same deep sense of
right and the same unanimous will to
maintain it, at the cost of any amount of suffering, shake off the yoke of the oppressor, and oppose to
his power the mere moral or passive resistance of that will.Simultaneously, as at the declaration
of war, every man, woman and child secedes from obedience to the despotic Government, and prepares
for the consequences . . . National
independence!'tis more than
gained and guaranteed;. . .
Democracy!that term falls below
the dignity of this people's prerogative and power, even while the . . . block
drips with the blood of their patriots and heroes, in every town and village of
their land.[10]

What gorgeous rhetoric, misplaced in just one
particular: he estimated only "dozens" of hangings per sizable
town.Oh well.As Stalin was saying, "A single
death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."[11]

In 1909 Gandhi exhorted India:

. . . no nation has risen without suffering; . . . even in physical
warfare the true test is suffering and not the killing of others, much more so
in the warfare of passive resistance; . . .[12]

In 1924 Gandhi warned that a people waging
nonviolent struggle must "possess the capacity for unlimited suffering for
any length of time . . ."[13]In 1934 Richard Gregg warned that:

If the struggle is against a powerful . . . government, and is prolonged,
the resisters may have to suffer horrible tortures and bestial treatment."War is hell," and in a big
long struggle soldiers and police abandon all restraints.[14]

This offsets somewhat a preceding statement he made
that nonviolent resisters face a "fair probability" of "sooner
or later" having "to suffer hardships, and perhaps wounds, imprisonment and even death.''[15]What I ask is that we rub our hard
noses a little harder into that "fair probability".

In
1939, Jessie Wallace Hughan stated the following as one of her four
"Principles of Unarmed Defense":"4.All
public officials pledged to die rather than surrender."[16]Although later writers scorned the
over-simplicity of some of her ideas, this one has been retained by them to a
greater or lesser extent.(Lesser,
in my case.I have discussed the
idea of a "sacrificial goat" authorized by a Polity to sign pro-forma
surrenders, until repudiated by the Polity.[17])

In 1955, a Quaker panel, addressing themselves to
the realities of power politics, made this point about nonviolent resistance:

. . . readiness to accept suffering — rather than inflict it on
others — is the essence of . . . nonviolent defense . . . we must be
prepared if called upon to pay the ultimate price.[18]

Obviously, if men are willing to spend billions of treasure and countless
lives in war, they cannot dismiss the case for non-violence by saying that in a
non-violent struggle people might be killed!

(Might
be?No, will be!)

It is equally clear that where commitment and the readiness to sacrifice
are lacking, nonviolent resistance cannot be effective.[19]

In fact, this pamphlet, Speak Truth to Power, was a serious effort to launch a dialogue on
nonviolent resistance with foreign policy realists.Among its prime movers was Robert Pickus, a
"realist" pacifist par excellence.He and Stephen Cary defended the pamphlet in a symposium
published in the October 1955 issue of TheProgressive.Among the critics were George Kennan,
Hans Morganthau, Reinhold Niebuhr, Norman Thomas, and Dwight Macdonald.Oddly enough, in the original
magazine, Pickus and Cary sidestepped an
oft-heard criticism, here voiced by Macdonald, that Communist invaders
"would not shrink from whatever measures of extermination seemed
necessary."[20]But in a reprint version of the symposium, four paragraphs were added, coming
to grips with that poser.As part
of the addendum, Pickus and Cary conceded:

This is not to suggest that non-violent resistance could be carried out
without suffering.Against a
totalitarian opponent it would clearly receive a far sterner test than against
one imbued with an ethical tradition of the sacredness of human life.Indeed, the prospect of suffering that
would be involved is appalling to contemplate.[21]

Cecil Hinshaw was another member of the 1955 Quaker
panel.In his own pamphlet the
following year, he made this assessment about the consequences of U.S.
nonviolent defense against Soviet occupation:

At the worst, it would be a long and costly struggle over a generation or
two, hurting the economy of the country badly . . . and resulting perhaps in
the liquidation of thousands of our best people.[23]

In 1958, Bradford Lyttle looked the Gorgon a little
more closely in the eye, and made a somewhat higher forecast:

If, under a nonviolent resistance defense program, the United States . .
. were invaded, it is likely our casualties would be considerable before the
invaders withdrew.I . . .
estimate . . . our total killed would not exceed our military losses in the
Second World War.[24]

These were in the vicinity of 300,000.(Lyttle also used the picturesque
phrase "eugenic insanity" for characterizing the casualties of World
War I, and war in general.It is
said by him and others of nonviolent defense that the burden of dying would not
be skewed to the healthiest classes of youth, but would be more generally
shared, especially among older leadership groups.)

Without referring to death totals, Richard Gregg in
the 1958 edition of his book did make this significant point:

If freedom is worth anything, it is worth fifty or a hundred years of
unstinted effort in rigid adherence to the nonviolent method.[25]

Ralph Bell has been one of the more funereal
analysts of what may be expected in the ordeals of nonviolent combat.He offered this prognosis in 1959:

I fully realize that a struggle with Russia fought out by Active
non-violent Resistance methods would be a costly business, calling for moral
courage, rigid discipline and a willingness to die for the cause, but I am not
prepared to say it is unworkable . . . . It would mean heavy casualties,
possibly very heavy casualties . . .[26]

Yes; but only "possibly"?In 1966 and 1968, Bell devised a plan
for British and Commonwealth intervention in the Rhodesia struggle, including
these provisos applicable to unarmed defense generally:"Casualties ought to be expected and planned for," he wrote.[27]He also cautioned as follows:

It is no part of nonviolent tactics to provoke the opposition to violence
so that political capital can be made out of the deaths of nonviolent
volunteers.But a nonviolent force
must expect some casualties and cannot hope to be successful unless its members
have trained themselves to accept those casualties without bitterness and
without retaliation . . . .It is
when casualties are suffered that the nonviolent force has within its grasp the
satisfactory solution of the conflict . . .[28]

"Some" casualties — but here Bell was discussing a
limited conflict.

In 1967, Adam Roberts mentioned that
"readiness to face . . . repression must be a central feature of civilian
defence policy."[29]In 1973, Gene Sharp put it this way:

Facing repression with persistence and courage means that the nonviolent
actionists must be prepared to endure the opponent's sanctions without
flinching.[30]

Then in a later passage, Sharp echoed Gregg's
semi-acumen: citing the hazards, but downplaying them with connotations of
rarity:

There must be no illusions.In some cases nonviolent people
have not only been beaten and cruelly treated but killed, not only accidentally
or as isolated punishment, but in deliberate massacres.[31]

You don't say!And in only some cases?

In 1962, Mulford Q. Sibley put a similar veneer of
improbability on otherwise harsh consequences:

At all points, it would be emphasized that actual physical suffering and even death might be entailed.[32]

Sibley was also on a subsequent Quaker panel whose
study of nonviolent defense appeared in 1967, and this one too seemed to have
it both ways:

The number of casualties could be
large, though certainly far less than in the event of a thermonuclear war.

My point is this:Without getting trapped in self-fulfilling prophecy, I think
it is more prudent to assume that
casualties would be extremely
heavy, instead of admitting that
they might be.

Should events turn out not so bad after all, let
that be a pleasant surprise.But
let there be no unpleasant surprise when worst comes to worst.Consider the non-surrender principle,
and a nuclear ultimatum.Now what?If these principles, non-surrender and sacrifice and all
of them, are accepted as the determinants of nonviolent common defense
strategy, the implication must also be accepted that thousands and millions of
deaths must be anticipated, either at one fell swoop, or in a very protracted
struggle.Does that sound
lugubrious, fatalistic, and fantastic?Let me just ask:

Where were you on October 24, 1962, when the United States and the
Soviet Union nearly engaged in nuclear war over missiles in Cuba?

So far I have dwelled on the first two aspects of
this principle:staggering
casualties and maximum suffering.They lead to a third aspect, which is a prediction, a hope — I
will not say a certainty — that if
the Polity can bear with and ride out such extreme mass terrorism (and if the slaughter is less than 100%), then the storm may subside, and the battle will have been
won.Hinshaw phrased it like this
in 1956:

... an invading army as we have posited would have instructions to use
cruelty and even barbarity on a considerable scale if necessary and if it
appeared to offer any hope of breaking the resistance . . . hostages would be
tortured and killed . . . For the tyrant, the chief value in such killing . . .
is the expectation that others will obey more readily thereafter.If the brutality does not accomplish
this intended result, the danger of its indefinite continuance is not as great
as it first appears.[34]

In 1964, Theodor Ebert construed this expectation
still more explicitly:

In so far as nonviolent resistance steels itself for the initial
Machiavellian wave of terror and is prepared to meet the second onslaught,
there must be a limit to further terror because of a dwindling belief of the
invaders in the invincibility of their ideology and its capacity to bring
happiness to all mankind.[35]

That is good news, but it is not the key part of
the principle; suppose indeed a foe aims at a 100% wipe-out?Such a situation would have be examined
for the particulars of a given Polity
and Foe-Polity.The
"Sacrifice" Principle only says that heavy casualties must be
expected — not how to prevent them.Also, without evading this kind of worst case, I think it can be said
that total extirpation is an exceptional — yes, extremely exceptional
— political aim.It has been tried.We should beware.But
attempted subjugation via extravagant brutality is the far more common danger.

We do not want to inculcate a national
death-wish.We do not expect the
populace to be lambs for slaughter.What is important here is the Polity's stoicism and morale — that
it not be caught off balance when the Foe-Polity goes all out with those
"brutal strong-arm methods".Or much less than all out.Ill-prepared resistance can be deflated by a whiff of grapeshot.Consider the massacre in Sharpeville,
South Africa in 1960, the effect of martial law in Poland on Solidarity in
1981, or the Tiananmen Square crackdown in China, 1989.

With this principle — as well as the others
— I have stressed that nonviolent defense must entail a readiness to bear
with massive suffering and dying, and that personal death or national
annihilation must in the long run be viewed in a philosophic or religious
context.But a certain type of
commentator — sometimes an apostate pacifist, such as Reinhold Niebuhr,
Dwight Macdonald, or Norman Thomas — will argue against this: against
what Macdonald called an "ultimatist" perspective, or against what
the Quaker group in 1955 called "the politics of eternity"[36]A statesperson (or revolutionary) must
make here-and-now decisions, and cannot, rhetoric aside, rely on divine
assistance, or so the argument goes.The gun is almightier than God.(Meanwhile, a cross-fire is set up by those [e.g., William F. Buckley]
who sneer at peace activists for supposedly seeking 'mere biological survival':
hardly the case in this paper.Such critics would be aghast at laying down so many lives without
shooting back.)

Obviously it is unfair to assume that only a
nonviolent defense strategy would risk megadeath and destruction.The nuclear facts of life today are not
so shocking as in the late 1950s when Herman Kahn scandalized audiences by
mentioning out loud how many million deaths would be "acceptable" in
order to, say, prevent the "loss" of Berlin.Now that is all but taken for granted.

At the same time, nonviolent strategy options are
the least known and the least tried, or else tried with the least
tenacity.Let there be a minor
massacre at Sharpeville, something less than a hundred dead, and that is said
to be the end of the line for nonviolence.No more Mr. Nice Guy.

So the moral value of nonviolence is liable to be
scorned not only by rebels and nuclear strategists.It is also dismissed by ex-pacifists who say we cannot count
on God to bless the self-sacrifice of a nonviolent nation.And, as we shall see, modern exponents
of nonviolent defense themselves tend to downplay the moral element of their
argument.

But there is no need to derogate a moral concern about killing, and the consequences of
refusing to do so.In the totality
of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, it may have been the moral issue, as insistently voiced by Robert Kennedy, that
provided the tiny and momentary margin of safety whereby armageddon was
avoided.Arguing against Dean
Acheson, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, et al., Robert Kennedy protested that he

could not accept the idea that the United States would rain bombs on
Cuba, killing thousands and thousands of civilians in a surprise attack . . .
This, I said, could not be undertaken by the U.S. if we were to maintain our
moral position at home and around the globe.Our struggle against Communism throughout the world was far
more than physical survival — it had as its essence our heritage and our
ideals, and these we must not destroy.

We spent more time on this moral question during the first
five days than on any other single matter . . . We struggled and fought with
one another and with our consciences, for it was a question that deeply
troubled us all.[37]

After President John F. Kennedy had decided to
defer (to defer) a surprise attack in
favor of the blockade, Robert Kennedy concluded that:

The strongest argument against the all-out military attack, and one no
one could answer to his satisfaction was that surprise attack would erode if not
destroy the moral position of the United States throughout the world.[38]

By no means am I saying that Robert Kennedy was a
pacifist!Only that he raised just
enough of a moral argument for just long enough to perhaps have been the Dutch
boy at the dike. Also,
according to Theodore Sorenson, Robert Kennedy, in his unfinished memoir, had
intended

to add a discussion of the basic ethical question involved: what, if any,
circumstance or justification gives this government or any government the moral
right to bring its people and possibly all people under the shadow of nuclear
destruction?[39]

This is good as far as it goes, but even Robert
Kennedy's fellow dove Sorenson has minced words here."Bringing under a shadow" is rather abstract and
euphemistic.Sorenson and Robert
Kennedy and the other crisis managers in both countries were themselves just an eyeball away from pouring nuclear fire and
brimstone on more people than all mass murderers in history combined.

Therefore, it is appropriate to measure these principles
against the extremity of nuclear war, as well as all the lesser degrees of
organized killing.Then if any
Principle of strategic nonviolent defense seems hard to swallow, seems to
require too much human sacrifice, we need only let our minds momentarily ponder
October 1962; or a "rational" nuclear war; or an ordinary protracted
war with merely millions of casualties; or a miniscule war in a vest-pocket
country such as Lebanon or Ulster, with "miniscule" casualties, and
religious consolations.Sacrifice,
real and potential, gushes all around us in tragically wasteful
cloudbursts.Like fire and flood,
this human energy must be voluntarily — repeat, voluntarily —
channeled to the benefit and longer run survival of the world community and
human posterity.

Postscript

We should at this point pause to reflect on whether
divine assistance is still operative or essential, in reality, or in nonviolent
defense theory.We cannot risk and
write off so many lives without asking whither and why.

Is God real, or helpful?That is for you to decide.Personally I am a Quaker, but I have my doubts; and most of
my eggs are in a rational basket.Therefore I do not say that nonviolent defense is contingent on a
Supreme Ally.But neither do I
want to disregard a providential influence in worldly power politics, whether
exemplified by the life of Gandhi, the survival of Israel, or the twin
emergence of Solidarity and a Polish Pope.

Until about the late 1950s, the strategy of
nonviolent defense was reinsured by God.Since then it has become almost totally secularized.For Gandhi, in his day, nonviolence
without God was impossible; and death is merely an intermission.A. J. Muste (1885-1967), a pioneer
theorist of nonviolent defense, shifted the tone of his argument increasingly
in later years from Christian advocacy to political analysis with a more
generalized morality.As we have
seen, the 1955 Quaker case for nonviolent resistance adverted to the
"politics of eternity".But its 1967 sequel omitted a Quaker/moral epilogue which was in the
1965 draft.[40]The younger Gene Sharp was a fervid
Gandhian, but his 1973 masterwork, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, does not even list "God",
"truth", or "morality" in the index.More recently, Sharp has tended to
scoff at such preoccupations as "halo-polishing".[41]
This is indicative of a decision he and others made in the early 1960s, for
nonviolent defense strategy to fly on its own without coming back to its
earlier nest of religious pacifism and Gandhiism.

An essentially strategic doctrine for nonviolent
defense is all to the good — indeed, one of my own specialties.But I suggest it is not halo-polishing
to correct the ultra-pragmatic tilt a little, in order to reconsider first
principles and extreme consequences and moral wherefores and divine
solace.The average soldier and
the chief of staff, the dedicated terrorist and the implacable tyrant, must
each operate from some philosophic or
religious starting point.The
moral premises of nonviolent defense strategy cannot be evaded by undue
striving toward a pseudo-pragmatism.

That said, I will water my own wine.I have argued the "Sacrifice"
Principle in its most stringent and dogmatic form.But reality and real people will have their own
priorities.Signing up for heavy-casualty
lists is not one of them.Personal
and national ambivalence about heroism is an old story.Pragmatic nonviolent resistance
planners will have declaratory as well as action policies, balancing public
resilience and the art of the possible.

The steadfast Polity will indeed Expect the
worst and tolerate heavy casualties—
but this is a principle to be husbanded very carefully; to be saved for a very
rainy day.High national endeavor
can be galvanized by the likes of Thomas Paine, Carl Mannerheim of Finland, or
Ho Chi Minh; to say nothing of Napoleon, Stalin or Churchill.Like them, astute leaders of a
nonviolent common defense effort will discern those uncommon situations which
enable uncommon personal and national sacrifice.

[4]This
means that the casualty figures should be multiplied by 10,000 or 100,000
— ed.

[5]Five
digits literally means a number in the range 10,000 to 99,999.Nine digits means 100,000,000 to
999,999,999.Ten digits is
1,000,000,000 or more, given that the world's population is about 6,000,000,000
— ed.

[20]"Is
there another way?", a debate on Speak Truth to Power, with articles by Robert Pickus,
George Kennan, et al., The Progressive, October 1955, p. 24.The reprinted edition of this symposium has an expanded and
improved version of Pickus and Cary's "Reply to the critics".